The cruft of fiction : mega-novels and the science of paying attention / David Letzler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Letzler, David, author.

Series:

Frontiers of narrative.

Frontiers of narrative

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fiction--Psychological aspects.

Fiction.

Reading, Psychology of.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vii, 303 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Lincoln, [Nebraska] ; London, [England] : University of Nebraska Press, 2017.

Summary:

What is the strange appeal of big books? The mega-novel, a genre of erudite tomes with encyclopedic scope, has attracted wildly varied responses, from fanatical devotion to trenchant criticism. Looking at intimidating mega-novel masterpieces from The Making of Americans to 2666, David Letzler explores reader responses to all the seemingly random, irrelevant, pointless, and derailing elements that comprise these mega-novels, elements that he labels "cruft" after the computer science term for junk code. Letzler suggests that these books are useful tools to help us understand the relationship between reading and attention. While mega-novel text is often intricately meaningful or experimental, sometimes it is just excessive and pointless. On the other hand, mega-novels also contain text that, though appearing to be cruft, turns out to be quite important. Letzler posits that this cruft requires readers to develop a sophisticated method of attentional modulation, allowing one to subtly distinguish between text requiring focused attention and text that must be skimmed or even skipped to avoid processing failures. "The Cruft of Fiction" shows how the attentional maturation prompted by reading mega-novels can help manage the information overload that increasingly characterizes contemporary life.

Contents:

Introduction : information and attention in the mega-novel

The dictionary

The encyclopedia

Life-writing

The Menippean satire

Episodic narrative

The epic and the allegory

Conclusion : the fate of the mega-novel.

Notes:

Based on the author's dissertation (doctoral)--City University of New York, 2014.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781496201645

1496201647

9781496201669

1496201663

OCLC:

984342727